May 11, 2008
What, no cut for the union thugs?
Mainstream media outlets tell a lot about their view of the world by how they label news items. The Lexington Herald Leader, for instance, took a story other people might view with pride or even reverence and labeled it "weird news."
I don't know which is weirder to them, that a ten year-old boy would raise $10,000 for his Catholic school, or that it would all be spent on educational equipment.
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May 09, 2008
Who is protected by government school monopoly?
The Economist has not one but two articles about charter schools in America this week (here and here). Given the way charters provide hope and educational success where government schools fail, Kentucky policymakers should be made to explain why they use their power to prohibit Kentucky children from having the same opportunities.
It is disgraceful that Kentucky's Charter School bill in 2008 had only three House sponsors and no companion bill in the Senate.
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When your governor feels beholden to the unions
Fast-growth states Arizona and Nevada could give Kentucky a lesson in how to afford school facilities for its students. Nevada, which hates school choice, spends twice as much as Arizona per capita on school capital costs. By encouraging charter schools and scholarship tax credits to take some of the burden, Arizona doesn't need nearly as much for building or keeping up public schools.
Given Governor Steve Beshear's stupefying appointment of a teachers union official to the state school board, though, Kentucky will certainly have to wait for another governor before we can learn anything from this example.
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May 08, 2008
I am teenager, hear me lobby
A reader checking up on teenagers in Campbell county in today's nky.com might wonder how young people ever stayed off drugs in the days before governments built skate parks, swimming pools and community centers.
We know they know how to play, but what happened to teaching kids to work?
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Taxpayers fight back -- in Indiana
While Kentucky's General Assembly went sleep-walking through the 2008 session and failed to reform the $26 billion dollar public employee benefits program, taxpayers in Carmel, Indiana were getting some action:
"Sponsors of a proposal to provide City Council members up to $18,000 in city-funded health benefits are withdrawing the ordinance after hearing strong public outcry this week."
Part-time elected officials on city councils and county fiscal courts across Kentucky get substantial benefits as well. Like their brethren in Carmel, Kentucky's part-time officeholders should have to justify such taxpayer expense when everyone else is having to tighten up.
"During Monday's meeting, no council members defended giving themselves benefits on the city's dime. Luci Snyder said the concept is generally acceptable because other communities, such as Indianapolis and Noblesville, do so."
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Michigan may get rid of income tax
Some people in Michigan are working to get 380,000 petition signers who want to get rid of the state's income tax and replace it with a state version of the federal FairTax proposal.
(Thanks for the tip, Grover Norquist.)
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May 07, 2008
New Report Shows More Good News for Charter Schools
Education Week is reporting that a new study (subscription required) found charter school students in Chicago had high school graduation rates 7 points above their public school counterparts and were 11 percent more likely to enroll in college. Those are quite impressive differences.
Education Week says the growth in charters in Chicago has been “rapid.” The city already has 28 such schools in the system and will add two more next year. Clearly, Chicago must be happy with their charters.
The report comes from some pretty high power research groups. RAND corporation, the Mathematica group in Princeton, NJ, and Florida State University. It is being praised for some unique new innovations that try to control for the possibility that charter school students have more motivation than public school students.
The Chicago samples also controlled for the problem issues of differing racial mixes and the accusation that charters skim the best students. Even after all those controls were applied, the charters came out on top.
I just downloaded the report, so you can read together with me by clicking here.
Then, chime in with your own analysis in our comments feature.
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How many politicians does it take to screw up a financial literacy program?
Two financial literacy programs. Two newspaper articles. One politician.
Sounds to me like the kids who didn't get a politician got a much better deal than those who did.
And until the state Treasurer's office is closed down, taxpayers are the real butt of the joke.
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May 06, 2008
We are on our own in Kentucky for health care fix
While everyone is watching gas prices go up, health insurance reform is dying as a federal issue. Look at this article, which promotes a socialized medicine scheme as a viable bipartisan compromise.
"Under the Wyden-Bennett plan, people with an income of less than 400% of poverty would be eligible for subsidies, everyone would have access to guaranteed and community rated coverage, and the feds would oversee a system of private individual-based insurance and would collect the base-line premiums through the tax system.In exchange for all of this consumer support, the Wyden-Bennett plan would also require individuals to have health insurance (an individual mandate) and that it must be purchased from a state-run purchasing pool that would require health policies have substantial benefits (rich benefit mandates) and offer a choice of private policies. There would be a flat personal tax deduction ($12,000 for a couple) for consumer insurance payments and low-income subsidies would be tied to the lowest cost policy available."
By the time this bill comes up in Congress, we will have even more data on the horrific mess Massachusetts has made with their similar plan. Emulating that kind of failure on a much larger scale will never get serious consideration.
The bottom line is Kentucky is going to have to improve its own health insurance market because Congress is too likely to stay stuck in its inaction. We are still too close to our 1994 experiment with guaranteed-issue nonsense to take another bite at the big-government health insurance apple any time soon. We need to look in the other direction for meaningful solutions.
If nearly everyone can agree more health insurers competing makes the market better for consumers, we need to consider loosening any regulations which might bring more companies back to the state. Here is one that would bring some companies back.
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Man up, Trey Grayson
The effort to shine a little light on Frankfort's spendthrift ways drowned earlier this year in the stagnant swamp that is the House of Representatives. Rep. Jim DeCesare filed a decent bill that has been mentioned on this site many times and explored here. Rep. Don Pasley filed a joke of a transparency bill.
Michigan has had a similar experience. The notable difference is their Secretary of State is leading out by posting her expenditures online without waiting around for a government mandate. Kentucky's Secretary of State Trey Grayson would do very well to pay attention to the leadership of his colleague.
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Call a special session, Governor Steve Beshear
Governor Steve Beshear has talked a lot about calling a special session to ram through tax increases. While some people still like that idea, Kentucky's $26 billion unfunded public employee benefits crisis is only getting worse.
A little leadership on this today would pay serious dividends tomorrow. As such, calls to (502)564-2611 may encourage Governor Steve Beshear to get it in gear pretty soon.
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May 05, 2008
Yankee Doodle dumb bill coming your way
Pre-filed bills for the 2009 Kentucky General Assembly will start popping up soon. In a state that would benefit tremendously by the implementation of a few free trade policies, we sure don't need to get bogged down by something like this:
"It was seeing foreign-made American flags at a veteran’s memorial ceremony that inspired a West Virginia legislator to act.State Del. Jack Yost (D), a former Army reservist, recently proposed a bill that would require that all flags purchased with state funds be made in the U.S.A.. He’s not alone — lawmakers in nine other states also have moved to restrict sales of foreign-made flags."
This is exactly the same reasoning that has us bogged down paying a prevailing wage premium we can't afford.
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All Barack, no bite on gas prices
At two Kentucky press conferences today, surrogates for Senator Barack Obama will explain why eliminating federal gas taxes this summer would do little to benefit Kentucky consumers. As has been done elsewhere, the Obama campaign seeks to link Senator Hillary Clinton and Senator John McCain over their support of the tax hiatus.
The press release states the campaign "will unveil the devastating local cost the 'gas tax holiday' would have on Kentucky – from job loss to cutbacks in federal highway funding, and highlight why this is exactly the type of short-sighted political game playing Senator Obama will seek to end as President."
Obama would be more convincing in his criticism of this "game playing" if he countered with a plan of his own.
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Rise of the Casino Zombie
In The Lexington Herald Leader's editorializing, repetition often attempts to replace brevity as the soul of their wit.
After the fashion in which we saw years of pleas for a government takeover of Kentucky American Water Company, we can now expect to see repeated attempts to revive the dead casino gambling savior of Kentucky's misadventures in fiscal management .
In a column title "Beshear's second wind: Racing needs casino boost, but can governor rebound and deliver?" Larry Dale Keeling takes the first stab at it:
"Lately, though, the coming down seems to bottom out a little lower every year because the face we show the world on Derby Day increasingly misrepresents the reality of racing in this state.Sure, we’ll always be able to deliver glitz and glitter on the first Saturday in May because the Kentucky Derby is the greatest two minutes in sports, a race that annually draws up to 20 contenders and provides the best damn display of equine and human heart, strength, traffic skills and riding ability you’ll find in any race anywhere.
But the rest of the year can be a struggle for Kentucky tracks trying to remain competitive with their counterparts in the growing number of states where purses are supplemented by casino and racino gambling."
Given the size of the constituencies either opposed to casino gambling under any circumstances or simply opposed to casino gambling for the purpose of anything other than subsidizing politicians' spending habits, the Casino Zombie is sure to stay just as dead as the Water Zombie.
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May 03, 2008
Are You an Education Cheapskate?
Are You an Education Cheapskate?
To find out, check out these two new You Tube videos:
and
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Stop paying bureaucrats to screw disabled kids
The Kentucky Department of Education and their enablers never miss an opportunity to hold public education back if the improvement would mean giving more freedom of choice to parents and students.
Their "we know better than parents" knee-jerking may have finally gone too far.
Rep. Stan Lee has seen his bill to benefits students with disabilities spiked in the House Education committee the last two years (here and here) by the same guy who nearly wet himself to get a little school choice in Speaker Jody Richards' district.
A new study on special needs scholarships could be the basis for a nice, juicy lawsuit on behalf of students all over the state.
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May 02, 2008
A preventable pile-up on the education superhighway
When Republicans got used to drinking big-government Kool-Aid, this kind of thing was certain to happen.
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Put on your fiscal responsibility goggles
Ronnie Ellis' column today takes a tongue-in-cheek approach to discussing Kentucky politics with visitors to the Kentucky Derby. It's a pretty funny read, taking swipes at everyone from Happy Chandler to Steve Beshear and David Williams.
Unfortunately, Ellis' best point is the saddest one for Kentucky taxpayers. He advises at the end of his essay that rather than explain to people any of what has happened in Kentucky politics since about 1967, readers should just get them drunk on mint juleps and hope they forget the question.
Given what our elected representatives have done to the state over the last four decades, that's probably pretty good advice for all of us.
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I thought we didn't allow spanking in schools
House Education Committee Chairman Frank Rasche got taken to the woodshed and thoroughly abused for his hypocrisy on improving education in Kentucky today.
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May 01, 2008
Ohio legislating Kentucky job growth
Kentucky's General Assembly managed to not shut down the state's payday lenders, but it looks like Ohio is going to go for it.
"One of the companies most seriously affected would be Check 'n Go, headquartered in Mason. The chain, owned by CNG Financial, operates 1,350 stores in 30 states, including 21 in the Tri-State.A lobbyist for payday lending companies told the Plain Dealer that the closure of lending shops would eliminate about 6,000 jobs in the state."
Kentucky will likely pick up some of these businesses -- and jobs. Maybe we will pick up on the idea that bad legislation sends business across state lines.
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Eventually, we will all be believers
Maybe you were glad to hear the General Assembly say they didn't raise your taxes this year. Or perhaps you are holding out hope taxes will go up on all the evil rich people. I don't know.
But I do know one thing. We have just closed out another day in which the response to the public employee benefits disaster has been nonexistent.
When the bills come due on the $26 billion unfunded public employee benefits in about a decade, most of today's politicians will be long gone.
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April 30, 2008
Finally, some good Kentucky education news!
Kentucky actually scores pretty well at one thing: leaving private schools alone so they can cream the over-regulated public schools with a minimum of interference from bureaucrats.
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The Science of Teaching Needs More --- Science
There are good comments in this Washington Post article about how teachers rely too much on “folk wisdom” and don’t pay enough attention to methods proved by scientific research that could help do the job better.
Sounds like some (though certainly not all, as the article points out) in Washington are finally starting to get it.
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Tightening the wrong belts
Public sector hiring in America was up -- a lot -- in the first quarter of 2008, while private sector hiring was down.
"Federal, state and local governments are hiring new workers at the fastest pace in six years, helping offset job losses in the private sector.Governments added 76,800 jobs in the first three months of 2008, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reports.
That's the biggest jump in first-quarter hiring since a boom in 2002 that followed the 9/11 terrorist attacks. By contrast, private companies collectively shed 286,000 workers in the first three months of 2008. That job loss has led many economists to declare the country is in a recession."
We add 76,800 people to the list of those who will be disinclined to ever support smaller government again and we wonder why we can't get legislators to cut back on public employee fringe benefits we can't afford to pay.
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Name Calling Educators
I don’t like being called a cheapskate – especially when it isn’t true. I’m sure taxpayers in this state agree. But, lately, the state’s education crowd has accused all Kentuckians of being cheap.
The latest shot at your reputation came in News Release 08-030 from the Kentucky Department of Education (KDE). The KDE claims, “According to the U.S. Census Bureau, based on 2003-04 data, Kentucky ranked dead last in per capita expenditures of state and local governments for public schools.”
Wow!
.....Dead Last!
..........You Cheapskate!
Well, it just isn’t true.
First of all, the ranking KDE cites doesn’t come from the Census Bureau. It comes from the National Education Association (NEA). We think you would want to know that.
Second, the NEA’s ranking is not based on a fair set of comparison data. The data NEA uses ignores two big-ticket items: teacher retirement and teacher health care costs.
Putting the KDE’s nonsense aside, the truth is that Kentucky taxpayers put up for education just about what their limited incomes allow. Calling taxpayers cheapskates for not wanting to spend themselves into total poverty is just mean-spirited name-calling. We would have hoped the state’s educational leaders would know better.
The KDE is supposed to be our technical expert on education matters. How come they didn’t spot the problems with the last place ranking nonsense before making themselves look both ungrateful and foolish by running it out in a public news release?
And, why do our educators persist in demanding more tax money from a population that probably cannot afford to pay any more?
Continue reading "Name Calling Educators"
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MSM still MIA on spending transparency
The Lexington Herald Leader has posted a website of legislator conflicts of interest. The only real news to come from this exercise is a claim by Rep. Greg Stumbo that the state money he used to build a golf course and three houses -- one of which he lives in -- is no big deal because it helped the local economy.
Otherwise the value of that site is limited to a he said, she said kind of bickering and interpretation that we could cut through if only we forced our governments to post all of their check registers online. It is amazing that professional journalists who spend all their time looking under rocks can't be bothered to advocate for flipping over all the rocks at one time.
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April 29, 2008
KEJA: Taxing, increased spending our only hope
It is amazing to me that some people think the biggest thing wrong with Kentucky is that our government doesn't tax enough or spend enough:
"We recognize that there are strong and very well-funded forces that oppose any tax even though these same people benefit from the public structures of transportation, law enforcement and public education. “No-tax” pledges make for appealing re-election slogans.However, legislators must recognize that increased revenue is essential if Kentucky is to compete in the 21st century."
The lobbying efforts of these people have a lot to do with why Frankfort hasn't had the will to get a handle on the $26 billion unfunded public employee benefits train wreck.
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Show us the money!
I'm not sure about their numbers, but the Association of Government Accountants says nearly one-third of Americans search online for information about how government spends our money.
Maybe it is time for us to have an organizational meeting. Creating government transparency in Kentucky is the key to taking the power away from secretive bureaucrats and returning it to the people.
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April 28, 2008
Feds Plan to Fix NCLB Problems
Our more seasoned readers know the Bluegrass Institute has been concerned for years about the loopholes that Kentucky’s educators punched in the federal No Child Left Behind Act’s requirements to meet all children’s education needs and honestly report high school graduation rates.
Now, it appears that the federal government has had enough of such nonsense. The April 23, 2008 Federal Register contains an extensive docket from the US Department of Education that proposes regulatory changes that specifically address many of our concerns. It is clear that the US Department of Education has had enough of states like Kentucky playing games with NCLB, and a reckoning is at hand.
Continue reading "Feds Plan to Fix NCLB Problems"
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Is that a veto in your pocket, Governor?
Governor Steve Beshear announced his veto of $3 billion in road spending over the next two years in HB 79. According to Section 88 of the Kentucky Constitution, though, if he really wanted to veto the bill he should have done it on Saturday.
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Here comes the real giant sucking sound
The state of Michigan responded to their slowing economy by enacting a convoluted tax modernization scheme that is creaming taxpayers in that state. Is anyone really surprised by this?
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April 27, 2008
KCCT Getting Watered Down, Too!
I recently posted links to a series of You Tube videos discussing new inflation in the final scoring step of Kentucky’s CATS school accountability program. Now, I just added another part to those videos that discusses still more inflation in Kentucky’s bloated testing system. This time games are played with the way the individual student academic tests are scored.
Check out this new You Tube video to see how the scoring standards for the math and reading Kentucky Core Content Tests have steadily gotten looser and looser.
If you are not familiar with the CATS program, you should first view the earlier videos in this series, Does Kentucky's CATS Assessment Require Proficiency Part 1 and Part 2, and Part 3.
Let’s see. First, they grade the kids easier; then they average all the students’ scores and grade that result easier as well to get each school’s final accountability score.
It makes you wonder how any school could fail this doubly watered down assessment program. It also leaves you wondering if we actually made any progress at all since CATS began. Since the tests now get a double watering down, how can anyone really know?
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April 26, 2008
Legislative Research Unit Plays Fast and Loose with Data – Again
Playing around with simplistic state-to-state ranking of scores from the federal National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) is becoming an addiction for Kentucky’s public education cheerleaders. These exercises aren’t very helpful.
Ample warnings about performing such rankings appear in all recent NAEP documentation. For example, this quote appears on page 7 in the latest NAEP reading report card:
“Variations in exclusion and accommodation rates, due to differences in policies and practices regarding the identification and inclusion of students with disabilities and English language learners, should be considered when comparing students’ performance over time and across states. While the effect of exclusion is not precisely known, comparisons of performance results could be affected if exclusion rates are comparatively high or vary widely over time.”
Later on the same page, the NAEP report card says that variations in demographics also can pose problems for fair state-to-state comparisons. Table A-3 in the report card shows an astonishing 33 percent of fourth grade students in California now are “English Language Learners,” while in Kentucky only 2 percent are so identified. Such astonishing differences help clarify why the simplistic state-to-state comparisons of NAEP data the KLTPRC attempts will simply not do.
Actually, the people who administer the NAEP are very worried about policy makers reaching the wrong conclusions from simplistic NAEP comparisons. Late last year the New York Sun interviewed several NAEP managers and reported that, “…future (NAEP) reports will eliminate numerical rankings listing states in order of their test scores.” The reason is that there is high potential for such listings to be very misleading because exclusion, testing accommodations and demographic differences vary widely from state to state.
Still, despite the fact that even the NAEP’s managers say state rankings with their test’s results are highly problematic and can lead to the wrong policy decisions, researchers at the legislature’s Kentucky Long Term Policy Research Center (KLTPRC) have once again ventured into this statistical danger zone with another simplistic analysis of NAEP scores.
This time, the KLTPRC tries to use the NAEP to claim Kentucky is getting highly cost effective education for each dollar spent. Whether that is really true or not is impossible to know given the current problems with NAEP data. But, even if the KLTPRC analysis were accurate, the real message in the report might be that spending more won’t buy us more efficient education. In fact, the actual data in the report suggests that we could get even more efficient education by simply spending less! Such is the potentially dangerous nonsense you get when you apply the wrong analysis to data that isn’t suitable.
Continue reading "Legislative Research Unit Plays Fast and Loose with Data – Again"
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April 25, 2008
Spending ourselves into a revenue crisis
The same collection of media figures, education "advocates," and other professional agitators who always come out of the woodwork for tax increases and bigger government have something else to chew on this weekend.
The National Conference of State Legislatures issued a report today purporting to update readers on the states' fiscal conditions. Unfortunately, anyone seeking real insight into taxing and spending policies from this report will be sorely disappointed.
Page two of the report, which you have to buy to read, begins with this quote:
“Revenue is the problem,” as one legislative fiscal director so succinctly noted. Indeed,
anemic revenue performance has caused the vast majority of current state fiscal problems.
The analysis doesn't get any better. In fact, the "report" is really just a survey of state budget directors and is painfully short of any useful data.
This gem on page three under the heading "spending overruns" sums up pretty well why Kentuckians can't really draw any useful conclusions from this report:
"With revenue growth slowing, it is fortunate that state spending plans largely have remained
stable."
The editorials sure to come out using this report to champion tax increases to fix our revenue crisis will ignore the irony that anyone might consider stable government spending to be "fortunate" in the face of declining revenues.
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Volunteering to be Public (Sector) Enemy #1
State Rep. David Floyd is looking for trouble from your friendly education bureaucrats. This is what he told his local newspaper:
State Rep. David Floyd, R-Bardstown, said about 63 percent of Kentuckians’ tax dollars is spent on education.
“Our first budget priority is education, and this year it was the same,” he said. “If you read the newspapers or listen to news commentators on television or radio, you might think that we cut spending on local schools, but that is not true,” he said. Instead, the cuts were to certain programs, such as ESS, Professional Development and some Read to Achieve grants.
Read to Achieve is the most important of the programs, he said. The others were fairly new additions that were funded as extra money became available, he said.
“Private schools, I’m told, don’t have near that kind of extra money to spend and they seem to do just fine,” Floyd said.
Rep. Floyd doesn't have an opponent this year, but the KEA and their friends have long memories. Expect them to try to make him pay for telling the truth about this.
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Making a case for larger class sizes
The conventional wisdom in Kentucky (and throughout the U.S) has steadfastly held that smaller class sizes would improve student learning despite a stubborn failure for those results to materialize.
Found an interesting blog post suggesting we could spend less on education by raising teacher salaries and classroom sizes. A rebuttal in the comment section states large class sizes won't work in America because respect for authority is poor.
And that is probably one of the main issues. Now that Kentucky's policymakers are patting themselves on the back for passing a bullying bill -- there's an interesting wrinkle on bullying here -- giving teachers more control of the classroom may become a fiscal necessity.
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April 24, 2008
CATS Assessments Getting Watered Down – Again!
At almost the same instant that our kids started taking this year’s CATS tests, new changes became effective that further water down target scores schools need to avoid all sanctions under Kentucky’s already inflated public school assessment program.
The new CATS changes make it easier for students to score proficient on the individual CATS academic tests, and they also reduce the final accountability scores that schools need to avoid sanctions and to be rated as “Meets Goal” under the school grading system.
To learn how the new change to the school final grading system makes it easier for schools to look good, check out this new You-Tube video.
If you are not familiar with the CATS program and the CATS Growth Charts used to determine school scores, you should first view the two earlier videos, Does Kentucky's CATS Assessment Require Proficiency Part 1 and Part 2.
Posted by Richard at 09:24 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) | Post to Del.icio.us
Double dipping judge to start double dipping
Kentucky's Supreme Court Chief Justice is retiring and will start double dipping this summer in a program he created for that very purpose. Joseph Lambert will go on senior status June 27. This expensive program will cease to accept new recipients after January 31, 2009.
Bills have been introduced in the last two sessions to continue the senior status program beyond its sunset date (here and here.) Taxpayers caught a break when neither measure gained much support.
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Ask what your government can do to hook you up
The Lexington Herald Leader wrote an article today about a woman who went to Senator John McCain's campaign stop in Inez yesterday to protest his appearance and, one assumes, his policies:
Red-faced and flustered, Blevins made attempts to shy away from McCain, but he kept asking her to stand next to him, saying he needed her help to answer the questions.Blevins quietly remained by his side, restlessly pulling at her black T-shirt.
Her brush with fame did not change her outlook. She plans to support whichever Democrat -- Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama -- gets the nomination.
"I live paycheck to paycheck and I barely make it," she said afterward. "I can't do this anymore; we can't do this anymore. The people of Eastern Kentucky need a change."
Apparently she didn't specify what kind of change the people of Eastern Kentucky are looking for.
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April 23, 2008
When is Pension Abuse Day in Kentucky?
Governor Steve Beshear didn't keep his campaign promise on taxes for very long, but there can be little doubt he will keep his promise to the labor unions about elevating the Labor Department to a Cabinet. When he does that, he should hold a pep rally and press conference to commemorate the big salary increases and the negative impact (thanks in part to HB 299 in 2005) on the state's $26 billion underfunded public employee benefits program that will result from the change.
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Where facts go to die
Every journalist is taught to attribute opinions and statistics carefully to ensure accuracy. The Lexington Herald Leader repeatedly plays fast and loose with that guidance today in a single story about money and education.
Red flags went up in a hurry with this oft-repeated line about fiscal benefits of a cigarette tax increase:
"The Democratic-controlled House approved a 25-cent increase in the state's 30-cents-a-pack cigarette tax, but Senate Republican leaders balked. That move would have generated about $110 million a year for health and education programs."
Writer Jack Brammer fails to mention the source (and, more importantly, the limitations) of the $110 million figure. The LRC fiscal note attached to HB 262 estimates this kind of money might come in, but it doesn't take into account lost revenues from altered buying habits caused by the tax and it doesn't project anything past 2010. And that's just for starters.
Continue reading "Where facts go to die"
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April 22, 2008
Uh oh, Scooby Doo! -- Big Ed edition
Last fall, Kentucky's education bureaucracy was doing a victory dance about a report showing steady advances in K-12 public school achievement. The report was based, in large part, on questionable data depicting Kentucky's drop-out rate at or below five percent.
"A 2006 report by the Southern Regional Education Board found that a higher percentage of Kentucky teenagers are dropping out of school than their counterparts in other states, and the numbers are even more alarming when broken down by race and gender.For example, in 2003, 83 percent of the white females and 76 of white males graduated from high school in the U.S. However, in Kentucky, the graduation rates for white females was a dismal 69 percent and an even lower 63 percent for white males."
As Kentucky students go through their dumbed-down CATS tests this week to make their schools and administrators look good, this discrepancy deserves a lot of attention and discussion.
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April 21, 2008
Lunsford: I got mine, but you are out of luck
A U.S. Senate candidate in Kentucky said this morning on Louisville television he doesn't think Americans can pull themselves up by their bootstaps anymore because our government doesn't spend enough on education. I'm guessing Bruce Lunsford has been hanging around his new Washington D.C. friends long enough to have some really great ideas about how to fix this one:
Thanks Jake!
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Big government train coming around the mountain
The city government of Washington D.C. is moving toward a socialized medicine plan very much like the one Governor Mitt Romney signed in Massachusetts two years ago.
The plan in Massachusetts has been a success in the way most government plans come to be defined as such: lots of people have signed up and it has cost much more than expected. Others seeking similar results, it can be no surprise, are clamoring to jump on board.
Can Kentucky be far behind?
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Closed-door squabbling spurs childish spats
Senator Damon Thayer on Saturday accused Speaker Jody Richards of reneging on a pension agreement the last night of the 2008 General Assembly session. Richards will, of course, deny the charge. The secretive practices of the legislature will continue to keep the public in the dark unnecessarily.
We shouldn't even be having a debate about who backed out on whatever deal. If the legislature did its work out in the open where it belongs, we could concentrate on the underlying issue and leave the nonsense to a day when we might better be able to afford it.
Like never.
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April 20, 2008
Wishful thinking, and strange
The Louisville Courier Journal must have taken another poll, but decided not to tell us about it. How else could they come up with this?
"The public is so ready for a major cigarette tax increase that a special session to raise revenue and work on the pension problem just might produce some results."
Too bad their "poll" didn't tell them the public is ready for entitlement reform, smaller government, and spending transparency.
Posted by David Adams at 09:07 AM |